As the most successful solo artist in American musical history,
Garth Brooks is an unrivaled superstar. So why shouldn't he indulge nearly every professional
whim that has crossed his mind? Here are the oddest things Garth Brooks ever did.
In 2005, Garth Brooks legally and officially became one half
of a country music power couple when he married fellow superstar Trisha Yearwood.
The two met during a recording session back in 1987,
well before either were famous and when they were both in long-term relationships with other people.
In 1986, Brooks married Sandy Mahl, the mother of his three daughters,
Taylor, August, and Allie. That relationship began in a very colorful way. Brooks worked
as a bouncer at the Tumbleweed Ballroom in Stillwater, Oklahoma,
a bar and club near the campus of Oklahoma State University, where he was a student. Part of his
job as a bouncer was to break up and deal with fights, and one night two women got into a brawl.
Brooks helped one of the women when she got her hand stuck in a wall, and wouldn't you know it?
That woman happened to be Sandy Mahl, the person who would become the first Mrs. Garth Brooks.
In 1991, Brooks released "The Thunder Rolls," a bombastic, rock-inflected single from his second
album, No Fences. It would take the Number 1 spot on Billboard's Hot Country Songs list, his fifth
straight chart-topper, but that popularity and success would come without the support of a widely
aired video, which was a vital part of a major musician's marketing plan in the early 1990s.
Now, Brooks did make a music video for "The Thunder Rolls," an almost literal dramatic
interpretation of the song's lyrics about a woman who, when her partner comes home too
late on a stormy night, realizes he's cheating on her. The clip for the song raises the stakes
and the action by dramatizing the fourth verse left out of the single cut. In this version,
the wife grabs a gun and, it's heavily implied, shoots her man to death. The doomed two-timer is
portrayed by Brooks himself, barely recognizable under a wig, glasses, and artificial beard.
"The Thunder Rolls" earned a nomination for Video of the Year at the CMA Awards, but
country music-oriented TV channel The Nashville Network refused to air it, citing the violent
content. Country Music Television then joined in on the ban, pulling the clip from heavy rotation.
"I never wanted to be the guy that ever was in controversial anything."
VH1 ultimately added "The Thunder Rolls" to its playlist,
making it the rare country video on its slate of soft rock.
Between 1989 and early 1995, Garth Brooks' run on Billboard's Hot Country Songs was
both unprecedented and staggeringly successful. Brooks took 22 songs to the top 10 of the chart,
and 14 of those tunes went to Number 1, including "If Tomorrow Never Comes," "Shameless,"
and "American Honky-Tonk Bar Association." But that wasn't an uninterrupted streak. In 1992,
that span of unparalleled chart dominance was interrupted when
"We Shall Be Free" topped out at Number 12, a relative bomb for peak-era Garth Brooks.
The song was a bit of a departure for Brooks. Co-written with Stephanie Davis,
"We Shall Be Free" was an emotional, inspirational,
progressive plea for tolerance. That's all well and good, but according to Rolling Stone,
country radio programmers around the U.S. had a problem with one random line in the song:
"'Cause we shall be free, when we're free to love anyone we choose."
Because of that acknowledgement and tacit acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community,
"We Shall Be Free" didn't get as much radio airplay as it could have.
By the 2020s, the idea that musical genres were separate and distinct was a dying, dated notion.
Major acts like Olivia Rodrigo, H.E.R., Maren Morris, and Tyler, the Creator
boldly blend and bend musical forms in the name of creative expression. But in the mid-1990s,
musical types were very distinct, and an artist could proverbially raise eyebrows or
alienate fans or radio programmers if they dared explore outside the box where they'd been placed.
In 1994, Mercury Records released "Kiss My Ass: Classic Kiss Regrooved," a tribute album
to the '70s costumed arena rock masters Kiss. Amidst the rock bands on the LP
was the surprising inclusion of Garth Brooks covering the Kiss classic "Hard Luck Woman."
"The great thing about Kiss is they understand theater. They understand
that you don't get your 15 bucks off, just because you got their CD or their tickets."
The members of Kiss showed their approval by serving as Brooks' backing band on the track.
Critical reaction was mixed. Chris Willman of the Los Angeles Times wrote,
"An unrecognizable Garth Brooks does 'Hard Luck Woman'
under the very funny delusion that he's Rod Stewart."
Nevertheless, it was an odd, envelope-pushing moment when cowboy hat-wearing Brooks and a
makeup-free Kiss performed together on The Tonight Show in July 1994.
Most, if not all celebrities frequently and publicly give thanks to their fans. Without them,
they correctly argue, their fabulous lives of wealth and creativity would not be possible.
Other than some platitudes on Instagram, it's rare that a famous musician really does show
their appreciation for their followers and the people who bought their albums. In the 1990s,
right in the middle of his decade of dominance of the music world, Garth Brooks went through a
grueling ordeal to show his fans that he loved them back - more than once.
Country Music Fan Fair, now branded as CMA Fest, is an annual event in Nashville, sort of a country
music trade convention where superstars put themselves on display to interact with fans.
In 1992, so many Fan Fair attendees stood in line to get an autograph from Brooks that he dutifully
stayed put and signed something for everybody, a task that took 12 hours. He skipped the 1994
Fan Fair and in 1995 granted access only to successful bidders in a charity auction.
In 1996, he seemingly made up for lost time. From the morning of June 11 to the morning of June 12,
Brooks signed autographs and posed for photos with fans for a staggering 23 hours and 10 minutes,
according to Rolling Stone. Now, that's dedication.
It ranks pretty low on the scale of beliefs or obsessions that could be considered odd,
but Garth Brooks has a longstanding fascination with the number 7.
Perhaps it goes back to the date he was born: the seventh day of February in 1962. In 1997,
appropriately, Brooks released his studio album, Sevens. According to E! News,
he tried to release it on August 7th of that year, the same day he was set to play a huge concert in
New York City's Central Park, but it wasn't done in time and got delayed by a few months.
When Sevens did reach stores, the initial shipment of copies were individually
marked as first editions - all 777,777 of them, according to CMT. During his brief
and ill-fated foray to become a professional baseball player in the late '90s and early 2000s,
Brooks wore a jersey with "77" on the back. As CMT noted in late 2013,
Brooks sent out a fan email titled "first message from garth." It included the cryptic text,
"The sevens have aligned. It has begun."
That was an early sign that Brooks was returning to music
after a virtual decade-long absence. Then, on July 7, 2014, Brooks' camp announced a press
conference would be happening three days later, where he would then reveal a worldwide tour.
Brooks attended Oklahoma State University on a track and field scholarship,
and also played baseball in high school. It's the latter sport that he pursued professionally,
although he did so in the late '90s and early 2000s,
well after he'd established himself as a country music superstar. Brooks was also
around 40 years old at the time - the age by which most pro athletes have already retired.
Brooks' late-in-life sports journey began in Seattle in 1998, when he took a few hours away
from preparing for a string of concerts in the city by taking batting practice with the Seattle Mariners.
He liked it so much, and apparently showed off enough raw talent, that in 1999, the
San Diego Padres signed Brooks to play in spring training games. Used primarily as a pinch-hitter
and left-fielder, Brooks got one hit in 22 at-bats, making for a dismal average of .045 .
Nevertheless, Brooks kept trying to make baseball happen for himself.
The New York Mets gave him a shot in 2000, and he performed even worse,
going 17 at-bats in spring training games without a single hit. Still not yet ready to hang up the
cleats, Brooks took one final swing at pro ball four years later. In 2004 he joined the Kansas
City Royals' spring training team, and would go on to land a hit in a game against the Mets.
After a decade of dominating country music, what could Garth Brooks do next?
Soft rock. But rather than try out a new style of music,
Brooks presented himself as a character, an Australian singer named Chris Gaines.
Brooks planned to make a Gaines movie called The Lamb, and in 1999 he released an album
alternately titled Greatest Hits and In the Life of Chris Gaines, a pre-soundtrack to that film.
To promote the project, Brooks portrayed Gaines in Behind the Life of Chris Gaines,
a VH1 special in the style of its then-popular Behind the Music biography series. This provided
a lot of Gaines backstory, like how he was in a shady record deal because of a manipulative manager.
Gaines was also the focal point of an NBC special and he was even the musical
guest on an episode of Saturday Night Live, which was also hosted by Brooks.
On the whole, his Chris Gaines alter ego was another success for Garth Brooks. As Gaines,
the country superstar landed his one and only crossover pop hit on the Billboard Hot 100 -
"Lost in You" hit Number 5 in 1999. The Gaines album sold two million copies. That's a lot,
but that was still Brooks' worst performing album to that point.
"If I'd a played a country music artist, maybe I'd a got away with it. But I enjoyed the challenge."
The day of October 26, 2000 looms large in the life and career of Garth Brooks. It was on that
date when Capitol Records, Brooks' longtime label, threw a lavish party at the Gaylord
Entertainment Center in Nashville to announce and celebrate the fact that Brooks had sold 100
million copies of his albums in the United States alone. That's not only a remarkable achievement,
it's also rare - only the Beatles have sold more records in the U.S. than Brooks.
And Brooks did it in an extremely short period of time - a little over 10 years.
And then, that very same day, Brooks announced that he was retiring from
music so that he could focus on his family. Brooks told People in 2015,
"It was a good time to take a real good look at life,
because my former 10 years had not been a real life event. That decade of the '90s was crazy."
Twelve years later, Brooks implied to HuffPost that his retirement would end
when his youngest daughter, Allie, turned 18, in 2014. Sure enough,
at the end of 2013, he announced on GMA that he'd resume touring the following year.
"We’re going on a world tour. 2014. It begins."
As he's by far the best-selling country music performer of all time, it's no surprise that
Garth Brooks has been named the Country Music Association's "Entertainer of the Year" more
than anyone else. Brooks has received the award on seven occasions - four times in the 1990s and
three more times in the 2010s after his obviously very successful post-sabbatical comeback.
As Esquire pointed out, those latter-day wins are somewhat puzzling. Brooks last released
new music in 2016, but he somehow was named country's most dominant force in 2017 and 2019.
Perhaps Brooks was feeling the guilt and awkwardness on July 29,
2020 when he held a press conference to announce that he would officially take his
name out of consideration to be nominated for the CMA's "Entertainer of the Year".
The singer was actually responding to public pressure and online criticism.
"There was one tweet in there that really stuck in my head. It said,
'Hey, man. This guy, why doesn't he step down.'"
"100 percent agree."
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Nick Swift videos about your favorite musicians are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.